About NASA Space Settlement Contest

NASA Space Settlement Contest 2018 is organized by NASA Ames in collaboration with National Space Society and seeks to give students an opportunity to design practical and applicable orbital space settlement model. NASA Space Settlement contest is organized since 1994 and school students up to class 12 can participate in the contest individually or in a team, accompanied by the respective teacher.

Participants have to develop space settlement models & related materials and these designs are sent to NASA Ames further for the selection procedure.

The contest comprises distinguished categories, and entries are placed under the specified categories, depending upon the eligibility criteria.

The models presented must be intellectually independent and permanent.

The Grand Prize winning entry will be placed NASA Ames World Wide Website and the single highest scoring team or individual will get cash prize worth $3,000.

Additional categories based on artistic and literary merit are also included in the contest.

NASA Space Settlement Contest Reward

Grand Prize: The best entry will receive the grand prize regardless of category, consisting of the space settlement submission being placed on the NASA Ames World Wide Website.

Invitation for the Conference: All the participants of the 2018 contest will get an invitation from The National Space Society NSS 37th annual International Space Development Conference (ISDC) in Los Angeles, USA May 24-27, 2018. All the costs for attending have to be borne by the students.

Every year, hundreds of contestants attend, along with their parents, teachers, siblings, and friends. Special activities for contestants are planned, including:

The single highest scoring team or individual attending will receive the NSS Bruce M. Clark, Jr. Memorial Space Settlement Award for $3,000. If a team wins, the sum will be equally divided amongst them.

The highest ranking winners attending will be invited to give the oral presentation as time is available.

To the extent space is available; all contestants who attend will be invited to display a poster of their work.

There will be a reception for contestants, teachers, parents, etc.

All participants will receive a certificate.

NASA Space Settlement Contest Application form and Process

The students cannot submit their project online or through e-mail, only hard copy submission is allowed. Students have to fill the application form of NASA Ames Space Settlement Contest to submit their project. Students can click on the following link to fill the application form.

There is no registration required and no fee has to be paid, only the students have to send two filled up entry forms ( as hard copies) along with the one hard copy of the entry that they have prepared on the relevant topic to the following address:

Submission of NASA Ames Applications 2018

To receive entries on time, NASA Ames recommends either the U.S. Portal Service or a commercial service such as Fed-EX, UPS or DHL to the applicants.

Submissions won’t be returned. Students should keep a copy for themselves.1

Guidelines for the NASA Space Settlement Contest 2018

Designs, original research, essays, stories, models, artwork or any other orbital space-related materials can be submitted for participation purpose.

Designed models must be based on Orbital Settlements. Settlements must not be on a Planet or a Moon. It should be permanent and related to self-sufficient homes.

There will be no Electronic submission such as PowerPoint presentations, discs, CD's, DVD, videos or website. The project should be on paper, a student can, however, create electronic projects and send it to the NASA Ames.It’ll not be used for judging but NASA at its discretion can link to it further from the contest results page.

Presentation of the project must be very clear so that it is easy to understand.

Parents, mentors or Instructors can assist the students but the work presented itself must be entirely students driven.

Students can take other people's idea but should be written in their own words.

No Plagiarism: The submission must be the students’ original work. Plagiarism would be ignored in the case of short passages but that must be quoted within the columns (“ ’’) with the relevant source mentioned. Long passages containing plagiarism would be disqualified.

Image credit should be mentioned for the images used in the entry.

A bibliography must be included.

NASA Space Settlement Contest Selection Process

Individuals, small teams of two to five and large teams of six or more are judged separately. Entries are also grouped by age/grade of the oldest contestant for judging.

Students develop space settlement designs and related materials. These are sent to NASA Ames for judgment.

NASA Space Settlement Contest 2018 Result

NASA Space Settlement Contest 2018 Results will be announced in the first week of May 2018 and will be available on this page. Candidates can click on the following link to check the result.

Click here to Check Result(Link will be activated in May 2018)

Grand Prize Winner - Previous Year

The Grand Prize for the 2017 Space Settlement Contest went to a small team of two students (grade 10), Shashwat G. and Ankita P., from New Delhi, Delhi, India, under the direction of Aditya S., Delhi Public School R.K. Puram for creating Anastasi